MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

“Clarin rebelled against reality” when Cristina Fernandez diagnosis was “false positive”

Oscar Parrilli said his orders were to reveal all the information on the December 22 surgery

Faced with media controversy following Argentine President Cristina Fernandez thyroid cancer surgery that resulted in a “false positive” case, that is minor benign non cancerous tumours in spite of the original diagnosis, the Argentine Executive Chief of Staff Oscar Parrilli revealed that the president had ordered him to “tell it all” regarding the 22 December operation.

Parrilli who is one of the most trusted government officials of the Fernandez de Kirchner family since they started in politics in Santa Cruz province, said that the President was “in good spirit”, waiting to receive the visit of surgeon Pedro Saco to continue the post surgery recovery treatment.

But Parrilli also questioned the coverage certain Argentine media gave to the case. On particular, the Chief-of-Staff lashed out at Clarín newspaper, a long standing government adversary for its articles, that on Sunday referred to the President's operation as a case of “medical malpractice”, as the first diagnosis given to the President was that of thyroid cancer.

“We gave out all the information. When it was proven she did not have what was diagnosed, they rebelled against reality. It was like reality didn’t fit their economic and political interests so they tried to distort it” blasted Parrilli.

“All the information was released as it happened. It is a medical condition that is within two percent of the statistics and called a 'false positive'. The President was within 100% of this two percent and that should be celebrated”, Parrilli remarked.

The Maipu Diagnosis Centre that made the original diagnosis on which the surgery team at the Austral University proceeded to extirpate the whole of the President’s thyroid gland explained the fallibility of medicine.

Jorge Carrascosa head of the Centre said that the establishment has “a long and solid experience” in biopsies and punctures” such as those performed on President Cristina Fernandez last 22 December.

“This is the first “false positive” we have recorded in the Maipú Diagnosis centre since 1983” revealed Carrascosa who added that the centre receives over 1.200 patients annually and “our team was one of the first in doing biopsies in Argentina, with a long solid, proven experience”.

A biopsy is “a routine procedure, simple, in which the gland is punctured with a needle inserted to extract the necessary volume of material for the analysis”
Carrascosa added that the possibility of a “false positive” is not frequent, between 2% and 4% of cases and explained that “more common are the false negative cases, which means the material first tests negative but later is proven positive”.

“We’ve never had a false positive at Maipu, which means we are in a percentage of statistical inexistent false positive”, added Carrascosa underlining that the Argentine president’s case is precisely in that 2% to 4%.

“Medicine is not infallible, not for a President and not for those who are not presidents. It’s the same rules for the president and whoever”, said Carrascosa, “medical results fortunately or unfortunately are the same from a medical point of view in both cases”.

“What really matters is that President Cristina does not have cancer, that’s the point” underlined Dr. Carrascosa.